A disappointing 493k today, down a third on last week, breaking the stellar run we've seen in the last 10 days.
Maybe it's a Xmas effect, but we can't afford too much down time over the festive period.
Total is now 27.1m.
1/
We can see the effect here, with the weekly total turning down. From here on it's going to be somewhat distorted by the Xmas period, so is likely to be of less value. I've assumed there will be little activity on 25th/26th, even if some centres are open.
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The pale blue "to dos" now total just over 10m, but realistically, assuming 90% take-up, it would be around 6.5m.
With 6 full-ish jabbing days left, that's no longer likely, especially as many will be infected and not able to come forward anyway.
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Importantly though, we have very good take-up over age 50 - now at 87.5% above that age, which will be very helpful in minimising any surge in admissions.
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And finally for the graphs, here's progress over the last month. We've still a lot we can do under 50, with only just over a third of the under 30s boosted yet.
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And finally, to all who've followed these threads, and indeed any of my output this year, can I wish you all a safe, relaxing and enjoyable Xmas. And for those on duty, particularly in the health and emergency sectors, I hope you manage to catch some family time too.
Happy Xmas!
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A great thread on the state pension and National Insurance.
For me, the trailed abolition of NI and thus its replacement by general taxation in terms of funding state pension benefits will have a major generational redistribution of tax.
It’s been the case that (in aggregate) at any one time the working generation funds the SPs of the retired generation above it.
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If the abolition of NI results in an increase (albeit smaller - else why bother) in income tax, whilst those in work will in total be better off, pensioners will be worse off.
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The Pensions & Lifetime Savings Association has updated its guide to living costs in retirement. The full report is well worth a read, and goes into a lot of detail.
One key point is that it assumes that pensioners own their home outright - probably reasonable now, but the shift to renting means that in future years that may become increasingly questionable.
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It focuses on retirement income, but note that other sources may be used to fund retirement, whether it be income from savings/investments, or gradual withdrawal of capital. Much more likely to be relevant for those aspiring to a comfortable lifestyle of course.
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UKHSA estimates that prevalence of COVID in England and Scotland has nearly tripled in the month since the ONS restarted its COVID infection surveillance.
Fortunately prevalence is lowest at the oldest, more vulnerable age groups, but is estimated at just under 6% in the 18 to 44 age groups.
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Prevalence is estimated to be highest in the London area, at just over 6% across the population. Note though that confidence intervals are wider due to lower sample sizes than in previous studies.
So with the news this morning that the earnings growth announced today means the state pension (SP) will very likely increase by another 8.5% next year, it's time to set out once again why the SP triple lock (TL) is such a bad idea.
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It's all down to cherry-picking the best of the three rates each year. I did a thread nearly a year ago, that hopefully sets out clearly how the mechanism inevitably means that the SP will grow over time against both earnings (E) and prices (P).
With BH's still distorting individual weeks' figures, the cumulative position gives a better view, with the latest CMI age-standardised analysis showing mortality 3.8% (of a full year's mortality) worse than its reference year of 2019.
Here's the mea culpa - it was only wrong by a factor of 13, but at least the post has been deleted rather than just corrected and left up, when experience shows that only a fraction of the original audience will see the correction.
So what are the true numbers?
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In E&W the peak week in 2020 was just under 9,000, and the second wave peak was pretty close to that number.
In total ONS has recorded 199,728 COVID related deaths in E&W since the pandemic started.